Early Postcards -- Inside Tom Bailey's House

A room by room postcard tour
of the 1907 "Nutter" House

It was from this very house that the infamous young Tom Bailey got into so much mischief in pre-Civil War Portsmouth, NH. "Story of a Bad Boy" by Thomas Bailey Aldrich was one of America's first juvenile classics focus on, not a fairy tale, but a REAL boy, and it helped kick off a genre of boys books that included works by Mark Twain and Horatio Alger.

After his boyhood summer at Grampa Nutter's house on Court Street and a hitch in the Civil War, Aldrich published his groundbreaking novel in 1869. After his death in 1907, the house was restored to its mid-1800s appearance and opened as a museum. Back then most visitors were very familiar with the book, and the unassuming house became a literary shrine for those who treasured the Tom Bailey tales. Readers remembered his first love, backyard fisticuffs, the day the rascals burned a carriage in Market Square, fired an old cannon by the river, or took on the rival neighborhood gang in a giant snowball fight.

Today the house is still as it was, open to the public as part of a Strawberry Banke Museum tour. We've included some quotes from the book and you can follow a tour by Mrs. Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Although his fame has been tarnished by the years, Aldrich's book is still in print and the stories show how much - and how little - a boy's life is today. - JDR